Amy Adams talks to Hermione Hoby about her transformation from Disney princess to the smouldering, scheming star of American Hustle

Amy Adams has sparkly blue eyes, a cute, upturned nose and a reputation as one of the most polite actresses in Hollywood. Many of her more memorable performances, in films such as Junebug, Julie & Julia and Enchanted, have been steeped in sweetness. Indeed, she has seemed, at times, too good to be true; until now. Her performance in David O Russell’s new film, American Hustle – as Sydney, the hardened, hyper-intelligent and schemingly seductive partner to Christian Bale’s con-man – turns her reputation on its head in glorious style, and has already earned her a Golden Globe nomination.

It’s a film so good, and so distinctively itself, that people will be dressing up as its characters and quoting their lines for decades. Perhaps the most delicious of all its astonishments is the sight of Adams and Bradley Cooper grooving and smooching by the light of a mirrorball to Donna Summer’s I Feel Love.

Adams says that, after reading Russell’s script, she wanted to build a character “in which everything felt justified and it didn’t feel like she was just a sexy sociopath.” None the less, the internet is already teeming with screengrabs of her wiggling bottom and over-the-shoulder smoulders. I quote her a line from one American critic who, after seeing the film, asked: “How many youngsters will be jump-started into puberty by… Amy Adams in American Hustle?”

Continue reading ‘There are people I’d love to eviscerate’

Amy Adams Plays a Grifter in ‘American Hustle’
By Robert Ito to NY Times

In “American Hustle,” the latest film by the director David O. Russell, Rosalyn Rosenfeld (Jennifer Lawrence) plants a lipstick-smearing kiss on Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), a grifter who is having an affair with a fellow con artist (Christian Bale), who just happens to be Rosalyn’s husband. The kiss caps off a scene of rage-filled accusations and not-so-veiled threats. The possibility that members of the Mafia might kill all three of them only ratchets up the heat.

The kiss, Ms. Adams admitted, was her idea. “Rosalyn’s crazy,” she said. “And I thought, ‘What’s the craziest thing she could do?’ ”

A suggestion was made to Mr. Russell; Ms. Lawrence, it turned out, was game. As sudden as it is sloppy, the kiss is equal parts threat and assault, akin, in both feeling and execution, to the one Michael Corleone shares with his brother Fredo.

If Ms. Lawrence stuck the landing on the kiss, Ms. Adams hits about a half-dozen different emotions — from shock to fear to rage — with her understandably stunned response. Her character has already had the lousy night to end all lousy nights, and now this?

Sydney “is the most miserable human being I’ve ever played,” Ms. Adams said. “She is not — happy. I’m used to playing people that, even if they’re survivors, there’s some sort of light in them. I don’t know that she has that, necessarily.”

With a laugh, she added, “I think I like playing happy people.”

Fans of Ms. Adams know the type. For many of them, Ms. Adams, 39, will always be the wide-eyed, would-be princess who fell to Earth in “Enchanted,” or the chatty, cheerful Southern wife in “Junebug,” for which she received the first of four Academy Award nominations.

Continue reading Article: A Princess Finds Her Dark Side